We’re giving over most of the front page to the Meadows Texts, but don’t miss Morning Memo: The Meadows Texts Jump From Politics To Pop Culture.
The Meadows Texts Jump From Politics To Pop Culture
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler
Indulge me at least one more day of poring through our coverage of the Meadows Texts, which have crossed the barrier between politics and pop culture. Late night talk show treatment? Here we go.
The Latest Installments
What we published on Day 2 of the series:
- Rep. Rick Allen Shared ‘Wild’ Romanian YouTube Conspiracy Theories As He Challenged The 2020 Election
- Inside Team Trump’s Chaotic Attempts To Overturn The 2020 Vote In Georgia
- Texts Reveal Four Trump Allies Mixed Requests For Pardons With Big Lie Boosterism
Fallout From The Meadows Texts
We started to feel some of the impact of the Meadows Text series:
The White House condemned Rep. Ralph Norman’s call for “Marshall Law” first revealed by TPM:
“Plotting against the rule of law and to subvert the will of the people is a disgusting affront to our deepest principles as a country,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates told TPM. “We all, regardless of party, need to stand up for mainstream values and the Constitution, against dangerous, ultra MAGA conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric.”
Responding to the Meadows Texts, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told The State newspaper that he called for “Marshall Law” out of “frustration” and took the opportunity to spell “martial law” correctly:
“Obviously, Martial Law was never warranted,” Norman said. “That text message came from a source of frustration, on the heels of countless unanswered questions about the integrity of the 2020 election, without any way to slow down and examine those issues prior to the inauguration of the newly elected president.”
CNN, which first documented some of the Meadows’ texts earlier this year, reports that the Justice Department has fought in secret court proceedings to obtain the text messages from Rep. Scott Perry’s phone, which was seized by the FBI. As TPM reported this week in the Meadows Texts series, Perry was deeply involved in the scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
The Justice Department has tried to gain access to Republican Rep. Scott Perry’s text messages as part of a criminal investigation into 2020 election interference, facing off with his lawyers in a secret court proceeding after seizing his phone, CNN observed at the courthouse and sources familiar with the investigation said.
All Politics Is Local
Local outlets picked up on the involvement of area members of Congress:
- Alabama: “Mo Brooks reportedly described as ‘ringleader’ of effort to overturn election in Mark Meadows texts”
- North Carolina: “In the latest disclosure, the website Talking Points Memo obtained some 450 texts between Meadows and Republican members of Congress — including Reps. Ted Budd and Greg Murphy of North Carolina — and published many on Monday.”
- South Carolina: “SC’s Ralph Norman faces calls to resign over martial law text message to Mark Meadows”
- Tennessee: “Rep. Mark Green Messaged Mark Meadows About Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election”
- Pennsylvania: “Report: Meadows’ Texts Show Perry, Keller, Kelly Efforts To Reverse Trump 2020 Defeat”
TPM On TV
It was a full day of TV hits by your favorite TPMers on the Meadows Texts.
Hunter Walker led off Morning Joe:
Josh Kovensky on Deadline: White House with Nicole Wallace:
Hunter Walker on Joy Reid’s The ReidOut:
Josh Marshall on All In With Chris Hayes:
Josh Kovensky on Alex Wagner Tonight:
Other Coverage Of The Meadows Texts
Hunter Walker joined Molly Jong-Fast On her podcast Fast Politics.
Ari Melber’s The Beat did a segment with NYU law professor Melissa Murray and journalist Emily Bazelon:
The Bulwark editor Jonathan V. Last had a concise reaction: “holy motherforking shirtballs.”
The Atlantic weighed in … twice.
So did Esquire’s Charlie Pierce: So THAT’s Why Mark Meadows Fought Congress’ Subpoena
Wonkette: If You Have 1,000 Extra Hours, TPM Is Publishing All Mark Meadows’s Dirty Naughty Coup-Plotting Sexts
Oh boy. Howard Kurtz gives the TPM series the Fox News gloss.
We Busted Through The Politics-Pop Culture Barrier
Jimmy Kimmel included the Meadows Texts in his opening monologue: “Thank God this coup wasn’t planned by people who could solve the Wordle. We’d all be in a lot of trouble right now.”
So did Stephen Colbert: “These members of Congress communicating with Meadows were — and it’s not my place to editorialize — stupid, evil traitors who were trying to do crimes against democracy, for which they should be punished with decades of jail time.”
Climate Change In The Arctic
The Washington Post has a good summary of the federal government’s 2022 Arctic Report Card, which finds that the past seven years in the Arctic have been the hottest seven years since 1900:
- Fires and heat waves lengthen summer conditions
- Rain is replacing snow
- Low sea ice is affecting human activity
Hawaii Volcanoes Cease Eruptions
After a spectacular few weeks of dueling eruptions between Mauna Loa and Kilauea, the USGS announced Tuesday that eruptive activity at both volcanoes had stopped.
‘Plants Are Adequate If Not Thriving’
Room Rater strikes!
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Texts Reveal Four Trump Allies Mixed Requests For Pardons With Big Lie Boosterism
The text messages Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack show how frantically former President Trump and his allies worked to reverse the results in the 2020 election. They also reveal how many members of Congress and other political allies were part of this chaotic push to overturn Trump’s loss. And, in at least four cases, the text messages show political allies explicitly mixed requests for presidential pardons with help on the election efforts that were so important to Trump.
Continue reading “Texts Reveal Four Trump Allies Mixed Requests For Pardons With Big Lie Boosterism”White House On Norman Call For ‘Marshall Law’: ‘A Disgusting Affront To Our Deepest Principles’
The White House responded Tuesday to TPM’s reporting that Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) called for then-President Donald Trump to impose martial law in the final days of his presidency.
Continue reading “White House On Norman Call For ‘Marshall Law’: ‘A Disgusting Affront To Our Deepest Principles’”Inside Team Trump’s Chaotic Attempts To Overturn The 2020 Vote In Georgia
It was Nov. 5, 2020. Votes were still being counted in the presidential race, but it was looking increasingly grim for President Donald Trump. Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, had an idea to turn things around.
Continue reading “Inside Team Trump’s Chaotic Attempts To Overturn The 2020 Vote In Georgia”I Was Frustrated!
Rep. Ralph Norman (R) of South Carolina tells local press that his January 17th, 2021 call to place the United States under martial law to keep Trump in office — first reported yesterday by TPM — came from “frustration.”
Norman Responds To TPM Revelations Of His Call For ‘Marshall Law’: Texts Came From ‘Source Of Frustration’
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), whose Jan. 17, 2021 text to then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called for Donald Trump to invoke “Marshall Law,” has responded to the revelations.
“Obviously, Martial Law was never warranted,” Norman said in a statement to local South Carolina outlet The State. “That text message came from a source of frustration, on the heels of countless unanswered questions about the integrity of the 2020 election, without any way to slow down and examine those issues prior to the inauguration of the newly elected president.”
TPM first reported Norman’s January text on Monday.
Continue reading “Norman Responds To TPM Revelations Of His Call For ‘Marshall Law’: Texts Came From ‘Source Of Frustration’ “Rep. Rick Allen Shared ‘Wild’ Romanian YouTube Conspiracy Theories As He Challenged The 2020 Election
Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) is not one of the better-known figures in the extended universe of former President Trump’s political allies. However, based on text messages obtained by TPM, Allen is one of the members of Congress who worked most aggressively behind the scenes to reverse Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. Allen’s attempts to challenge the vote included passing unproven YouTube conspiracy videos from Romania to the White House and pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state. At least one of the paranoid election theories Allen texted to Meadows made its way directly to Trump.
Continue reading “Rep. Rick Allen Shared ‘Wild’ Romanian YouTube Conspiracy Theories As He Challenged The 2020 Election”Morning Memo
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DID WE MENTION THE MEADOWS TEXTS???
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Big Day At TPM
Over the past month, a team of reporters, editors and designers at TPM has been hard at work putting together a landmark series on the text messages that Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows turned over to the Jan. 6 committee.
Obtained by TPM’s Hunter Walker, the more than 2,000 text messages sent and received by Meadows between Election Day 2020 and Inauguration Day 2021 were turned over to the committee before Meadows stopped cooperating. It is believed that Meadows also turned them over to the Justice Department in response to a grand jury subpoena.
As Hunter puts it in the introductory post:
The vast majority of Meadows’ texts described in this series are being made public for the very first time. They show the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.
How To Read It
Start with the introduction: A Plot To Overturn An American Election
Then go to the seminal post of the series: Mark Meadows Exchanged Texts With 34 Members Of Congress About Plans To Overturn The 2020 Election
Next zero in on Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who was already known to be a key player in the election subversion scheme but not with this level of detail: Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry’s Work To Overturn 2020 Election Included A ‘Cyber Team’ And An Italian Job
Finally, Day One of the series concludes with special focus on Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who was one of Meadows’ most frequent texting buddies and is now challenging Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for speaker of the House: As The 2020 Election Slipped Away, Andy Biggs And Mark Meadows Schemed To Reverse The Vote In Arizona
How It Came To Be
TPM’s Hunter Walker has had the Meadows texts for some time. They were a key element of Hunter’s recent book – The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th – which he coauthored with former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who after leaving Congress became a senior technical adviser to the Jan. 6 committee. Other outlets also obtained some or all of the Meadows texts and reported on some of them.
But no news outlet had yet published a comprehensive review of the texts and contextualized them as part of the broad scheme to subvert and overturn the 2020 election. Until now.
Hunter, who after a nearly decade away, rejoined TPM’s staff in November, got to work right away on unpacking the Meadows texts. We quickly realized that to do the texts justice would require an all-hands-on-deck effort. The team has been working night and day for weeks. We knew the texts were highly newsworthy, but we also thought they had historical value and deserved a fuller treatment than they’d been given. The public reaction to yesterday’s launch of the series exceeded all our expectations.
Initial Reaction To The Meadows Texts
Heather Cox Richardson: “Today, Talking Points Memo began an explosive series covering texts to and from Meadows in the time around the 2020 election and its aftermath….The series, by Hunter Walker, Josh Kovensky, and Emine Yücel, examines texts not previously available to the public as well as some we have already seen.”
Rachel Maddow, who gave over the A block to the Meadows texts, opened with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) text calling for “Marshall law”:
David Frum: “Two concepts of reporting: @TPM breaking new inner-circle details of an ex/president’s plot to over throw an election and the Constitution; new @Twitter and selected writers arguing that well actually, Trump is the true victim here because his attempted coup lost him his account”
Bill Grueskin:
**UPDATED** Keep An Eye Out
Hunter Walker led off Morning Joe this morning:
What’s Next?
We’ll be rolling out more stories on the Meadows Texts all week. Three more are planned for today. I can’t give away too much, but one of them delves into the efforts to overturn the election results in a particularly high-profile state.
More New Subpoenas From Jack Smith
We’re still learning the contours of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation. A couple of more clues dropped Monday:
Secretaries of State:
- Smith subpoenaed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
- Updating the list of known subpoenas to secretaries of state: Arizona, Michigan, Georgia.
Counties:
- Smith subpoenaed Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas) election officials.
- Updating the list of known subpoenas to counties: Milwaukee and Dane County, Wisconsin; Wayne County, Michigan; Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; Clark County, Nevada.
One additional point: The Clark County subpoena was dated Nov. 22, which suggests it was part of the initial batch that went out to the other counties; the Georgia subpoena was dated Dec. 9, which suggests it went out with a later batch of subpoenas to secretaries of state.
It’s Official
Under orders from the appeal court, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump’s special master gambit.
SBF Arrested
It’s coming down fast for Sam Bankman-Fried. He was arrested yesterday in the Bahamas in anticipation of being extradited to face charges in the United States. A federal indictment against SBF is expected to be unsealed today in Manhattan. Meanwhile, the SEC this morning has filed civil fraud charges against him. All of this of course stems from the spectacular collapse of his crypto exchange FTX.
Keeping It In Perspective
We’re still learning details about the ferocity of the January eruption of Hunga Tonga, a shallow-water volcano in the Pacific:
The eruption of the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano in the Pacific Ocean early this year was so powerful that it sent a massive plume of water vapor into space, according to research released Monday. A volcano launching water beyond the atmosphere had never before been observed by scientists.
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